Hi all, hoping someone can help me. I have been searching for a solution, but have not been able to make sense of what I have seen. If someone could clearly explain a solution to my issue below, I would be more than grateful. System: Visual Studio 2008 R2 64Bit Situation: Processing data from various customers, each customer flat file has the same core columns that I wish to work with, but each has there own column order and may have additional columns. For example: Customer 1: A,B,C,D 1,2,3,4 Customer 2: A,C,B,D 1,3,2,4 Customer 3: A,B,C,D,E 1,2,3,4,5 My thoughts were to use variables to identify the columns (by column name) using find string (instr) or something similar in VB Script, then using those variables open the data with a flat file connection importing all data to one column. Then use a Derived column block and create the columns I need using substring findstring formula. Although i am having difficulty with the VB script component. This may be completely the wrong way about it? Open to any suggestions.

http://agilebi.com/jwelch/2007/05/08/handling-flat-files-with-varying-numbers-of-columns/ Hope this link helpful! Regards, Eshwar.

Thanks for comment, unfortunately this manages fine for where data may be missing from a column. But it does not address the two issues I face, being, where columns in different order or additional columns are included in the file. LS

Hi LS, Please refer to the following links talk about the topic: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/sqlintegrationservices/thread/53e3f59d-9442-43f9-99c5-37dd964408fc/ http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sqlintegrationservices/thread/3ef5cddb-f4c6-42f6-b301-3b434c3af0d3/ http://www.bidn.com/blogs/DonnyJohns/ssas/1999/flat-file-with-varying-column-lengths-and-number-of-columns Thanks, Eileen

Hi LS, Please refer to the following links talk about the topic: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/sqlintegrationservices/thread/53e3f59d-9442-43f9-99c5-37dd964408fc/ http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sqlintegrationservices/thread/3ef5cddb-f4c6-42f6-b301-3b434c3af0d3/ http://www.bidn.com/blogs/DonnyJohns/ssas/1999/flat-file-with-varying-column-lengths-and-number-of-columns Thanks, Eileen

Hi Eileen, thanks for the reply, but this does not address the problem. Surely i cannot be the only one who has multiple flat files with varying columns that need to be put through an ETL process.